One effect of the rise of AI therapy will no doubt be to perpetuate the assimilation of humans to machines, as we judge our own interventions by comparison with the bots
LLMs are merely predicting what word comes next based on a training set. Humans are conscious beings with a mysterious and vivid interiority.
If we go to therapy to learn how to better get along with other people, a human therapist is indispensable. If we want to become machines and live in narcissistic isolation from other people, AI is the way to go.
In my view, people are essentially seeking peace, rest, ease, quiet and realness, to be real. I don’t see how an AI therapist can bring this. It can explain, analyse, discuss, compare, reframe, reword, emulate, simulate…but it can never replace the fullness and intimacy of being present and aware in the moment. This being said, most human therapists can’t bring this either. It is not so much about what we experience but more about the way we experience.
Hi Darian - Could AI bots function to help the analysand self-hysterize by expressing the truths to their own unconscious desires and thereby eliminating the supposed reliance on an external big Other - master figure - as they realize they were always-already free to begin with and can consequently dictate their own desires (i.e. reconcile their inherent alienation from symbolic identity)?
Or will AI therapy perpetuate the standard cognitive-behavioral therapy model that aims to narrowly mitigate the subject's unhappiness and anxieties; working to adequately reintegrate the individual consumer back within capitalist social life as a means to resume their market participation typified by the disavowed superego demand to enjoy?
I think that Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology is already cybernetic (modeling a feedback system), and Lacan's work seems to emphasize that the signifier operates "ex opere operato," i.e.: automatically, and totally determines the subject.
So basically on a Lacanian view, it would seem that AI would be just as good as human beings at helping people, as they'd form transference bonds to them based on as little as interhuman transference bonds (i.e.: based on the signifier).
Still, humans healing themselves through talking to robots seems wrong, sick somehow. I could be misunderstanding something of Lacan's ideas. Certainly it seems like the AI is capable of taking the place of "the subject supposed to know." People have already fallen in love with AI bots. But it's not like people weren't occasionally falling in love with inanimate objects, or setting up love relationships based on misapprehension of the other.
I think we'd have to go back to metaphysics somehow, though that seems like it has its own dangers. Maybe to be really psychoanalytic, we'd have to ask what the whole AI conversation is really about...
Hey Darian, I’ve been looking forward to reading this piece about AI therapy for days. I finally got a moment and really enjoyed it-not that you want “feedback“ or anything LOL. I hadn’t even thought of the concept of AI Therapy before reading this. I like that you’re kind of on both sides of the fence. thanks thanks for being so thought-provoking. Keep up the good work!
LLMs are merely predicting what word comes next based on a training set. Humans are conscious beings with a mysterious and vivid interiority.
If we go to therapy to learn how to better get along with other people, a human therapist is indispensable. If we want to become machines and live in narcissistic isolation from other people, AI is the way to go.
In my view, people are essentially seeking peace, rest, ease, quiet and realness, to be real. I don’t see how an AI therapist can bring this. It can explain, analyse, discuss, compare, reframe, reword, emulate, simulate…but it can never replace the fullness and intimacy of being present and aware in the moment. This being said, most human therapists can’t bring this either. It is not so much about what we experience but more about the way we experience.
Hi Darian - Could AI bots function to help the analysand self-hysterize by expressing the truths to their own unconscious desires and thereby eliminating the supposed reliance on an external big Other - master figure - as they realize they were always-already free to begin with and can consequently dictate their own desires (i.e. reconcile their inherent alienation from symbolic identity)?
Or will AI therapy perpetuate the standard cognitive-behavioral therapy model that aims to narrowly mitigate the subject's unhappiness and anxieties; working to adequately reintegrate the individual consumer back within capitalist social life as a means to resume their market participation typified by the disavowed superego demand to enjoy?
I think that Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology is already cybernetic (modeling a feedback system), and Lacan's work seems to emphasize that the signifier operates "ex opere operato," i.e.: automatically, and totally determines the subject.
So basically on a Lacanian view, it would seem that AI would be just as good as human beings at helping people, as they'd form transference bonds to them based on as little as interhuman transference bonds (i.e.: based on the signifier).
Still, humans healing themselves through talking to robots seems wrong, sick somehow. I could be misunderstanding something of Lacan's ideas. Certainly it seems like the AI is capable of taking the place of "the subject supposed to know." People have already fallen in love with AI bots. But it's not like people weren't occasionally falling in love with inanimate objects, or setting up love relationships based on misapprehension of the other.
I think we'd have to go back to metaphysics somehow, though that seems like it has its own dangers. Maybe to be really psychoanalytic, we'd have to ask what the whole AI conversation is really about...
Hey Darian, I’ve been looking forward to reading this piece about AI therapy for days. I finally got a moment and really enjoyed it-not that you want “feedback“ or anything LOL. I hadn’t even thought of the concept of AI Therapy before reading this. I like that you’re kind of on both sides of the fence. thanks thanks for being so thought-provoking. Keep up the good work!